Proving once again that third terms are not for napping, Mayor Bloomberg has been caught off guard by the sudden spike in city violence. While he was busy touting boutique issues like more pedestrian plazas and building apartments for Hobbits, Gotham has turned into Dodge City.

The red alert is flashing. All the mayor’s beloved “edgy” projects will turn to dust if the lead keeps flying and the bodies keep piling up. New York’s economic boom, from real estate to retail, all depends on safe streets.

Crime creates poverty, drives out families and businesses, and scares away tourists. Subways start to feel dangerous and fear ruins city life before killing it outright.

Nobody should know this history better than Bloomberg. With Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, he has presided over 10 years of steady declines in crime, an incredible achievement that is his greatest legacy, despite his claims to be the “education mayor.”

Indeed, sounding like his law- and-order predecessor, Rudy Giuliani, Bloomberg said recently that “one of the basic civil rights is to be able to walk down the street without getting blown away.”

He said that in response to critics of the Police Department’s stop-and-frisk program. But events are outracing that debate, and the issue now is an explosion of violence. Suddenly, something dramatic and awful is happening on the streets and the mayor is behind the curve, and sounds as if he’s stuck in denial.

Amid a 28 percent increase in shootings last week, and nearly 10 percent for the year, Bloomberg turned testy when pressed. He insisted at a Monday press conference that the week around July 4th “traditionally has been a very high crime, shooting, murder week,” even though this year’s was much bloodier than last year’s.

When a reporter asked if there was something more the city could do, Bloomy put up his dukes, saying, “If there was, don’t you think we would do it? I mean, what kind of a question?”

Actually, it’s a good a question. His answer is the problem.

For the year, through Sunday, 880 people have been shot, 77 more than last year for the same period. There were 21 murders last week alone, three more than last year.

It’s foolish to argue that the city has returned to the bad old days. There have been other crime spurts in recent years, nearly all of them aberrations that didn’t last.

But pretending that all is in order is risky business if there’s no obvious reason for the latest spike. And New York is not alone, or even the worst. Chicago’s murder rate is up 38 percent from last year.

Whether there are more guns on the street, or just more itchy trigger fingers, the brazenness is frightening. It’s of no comfort for the mayor to say, in effect, this is murder as usual.

Bloomberg toned down the testiness yesterday, but still argued that major course changes aren’t necessary. He brushed off a call to increase the size of the police force, saying it was adequate and affordable, and doesn’t seem open to any other changes, including on tactics.

“I do not think that we’re in the middle of a crime wave,” he told reporters. “We are doing the same thing tomorrow that we did yesterday. It’s been working for the last 10 years, bringing crime down, and it’s a variation on what the Giuliani administration did for eight years before that. And we’re going to continue to do it to bring crime down, period.”

He better be right, or we’ll all be sorry.

Good for team, bad for nation

Politics is a team sport, but it’s often hard to know which team the pols are playing for. When in doubt, here’s a safe bet—they’re playing for the party’s team, not yours.

Take the case of leading Democrats who oppose President Obama’s fetish for hiking income taxes on families with incomes over $250,000. New York Sen. Chuck Schumer and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi were among those who broke with Obama and said the hikes should hit only those earning over $1 million.

They wanted, they said, Obama’s tax on “millionaires and billionaires” to be just that. “Two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand dollars makes you really rich in Mississippi but it doesn’t make you rich at all in New York,” Schumer said in announcing his break with Obama in September.

What a difference a campaign makes. On Monday, Schumer and Pelosi switched teams and joined Obama’s, leaving their hometown taxpayers on the firing line.

Politico reports that Schumer “still believes that the millionaire strategy is the best one. But he believes more that party unity at this time is even more important,” it wrote, quoting what it said was a “a person close to Schumer,” most likely the senator himself. This “person” added that Schumer decided “he’s going to be a team player for the president.”

Thankfully, no tax hike will survive the Republican House, but the incident perfectly captures why Washington is stuck. Schumer wants to be Senate majority leader, so he’s got to toe the party line, even when he knows better.

Meanwhile, with ObamaCare taxes already scheduled to siphon billions from high-income earners each year, New York does have somebody else on its team. The GOP, the party most New Yorkers love to hate, is protecting us from even higher taxes. Thank them.

O’s change poll-arizing

So many polls, so little time. But here’s one with startling findings that make it a must-read.

A survey for The Hill newspaper finds that voters overwhelmingly agree President Obama has made good on his promise to transform the country. Unfortunately for him, and the country, 56 percent believe Obama’s first term has changed America in a negative way, compared with 35 percent who believe he has changed it for the better.

Compounding the grim outlook for the White House, one in five Dems believe Obama has changed the country for the worse, the paper reports, while only 71 percent say he has made things better.

Among whites of all parties, just 29 percent think Obama has made the country better.

The good news for Obama, if he dare call it that, is that 80 percent of liberals are happy with the results, while the other 20 percent presumably favor an even more radical president.

Perhaps Venezuela is their kind of place.

Political Wis.dom

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, in New York for a speech to the Manhattan Institute, offered a keen observation about the low expectation people have for government. “Politics is the only profession where you get called courageous just for keeping your word,” he said. “Everywhere else, in life and business, it’s expected.”

Sad and true.

Oy, such a nice festival

A festival of peace and Yiddish music begins today in Amherst, Mass., that includes films, lectures and exhibitions. You don’t have to be Jewish to get a smile: Promoters call it Yidstock.